Page 44 of Boardroom Mask

What a solutionthatwas.

As I cross Amsterdam, a taxi honks at me when I step into traffic without looking. I don’t flinch. It knows better than to hit me. Besides, why would it even bother? What’s the point of killing a man who’s already dead inside?

The math is getting worse by the hour. Every day she’s alive is a day Lukas’s patience thins. If it’s Afon crawling through Jillian’s window instead of me, then this whole charade is fucked. Afon won’t give her a choice. He won’t stop when she says stop.

I’ve stood in rooms where the walls needed repainting after Afon was done with them. It’s not a pretty sight. At the mere thought of him doing that to Jillian, my stomach turns. I stop walking, bend over, put my hands on my knees, and try not to throw up.

Even now, I can still feel her, the grip of her body around me. The mewl she made when I pushed inside her for the first time… It sounded like a lock turning open after years of rust.

And then she crawled to the wall, curled up, andshook. The look on her face…

I straighten up and keep walking. I am my father’s son. That’s what everyone says. A weapon. A tool. Some blunt object that follows orders and doesn’t ask questions and absolutely, under no circumstances, develops feelings for the target.

I have failed on every count.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I already know who it is before I pull it out. There’s only one person who texts me at three in the morning, and he doesn’t do it to ask how my day went.

LUKAS LAZAREV

Is it done yet?

I stop walking. I’m on some block I don’t recognize, somewhere between Amsterdam and the river, standing under a busted streetlight that keeps flickering on and off. I look back the way I came. I can’t see Jillian’s building from here, but I know which direction it is, and I know which window is hers. It’ll be dark now. She might still be sitting on that kitchen floor. Or maybe she’s in the shower, scrubbing either the wall or her skin, the way people do when they’re trying to wash off something that isn’t dirt.

Or she might be asleep. Lights on, probably. I can hardly blame her.

I look down at my father’s text again. The options are pretty straightforward. I can tell him the truth:No, Dad, it’s not done. I fucked her on her kitchen floor, and now, I’m wandering the streets of the city like a stray dog because I can’t go home and I can’t go back to her and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore.

Yeah, that would go over well.

Or I could lie. Again. Buy myself another day, maybe two, before the leash gets shorter and Afon gets the call.

I type with my thumb.

She wasn’t home. Will have to try again tomorrow.

It will be handled.

I read it back. It sounds plausible enough. Targets aren’t always where you expect them to be. It happens. Even Lukas would accept that, however grudgingly.

The reply comes almost immediately.

LUKAS LAZAREV

It better be.

PART II

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

16

JILLIAN

“Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door / Who is it for?”

— “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles

I wake up on the kitchen floor with my cheek glued to the tile. There’s a crust of dried drool at the corner of my mouth and my neck is kinked at an angle that’s going to hurt for days. My pajama bottoms are still bunched around my ankle.